What is Self-Directed Investing?

last updated 2018-07-05

What is self directed investing? How do it yourself investing works and why it might get you better returns in the long run.

A subtle and pernicious pitfall in the investing world is that lots of
people want to make money off of you. Sometimes it's worth paying for advice,
but other times people will say or do anything to take dollars out of your
wallet. Sometimes this is deliberate (penny stock pump and dump
scams) while other times it's a product of a broken system (exorbitant broker fees).

In the end, Trendshare's philosophy is that you earned your money. It's your
responsibility to decide what you invest in and why and whatever you earn from
investing is your reward for thinking and working hard.

It should be no surprise that this site celebrates the idea of self-directed
or do-it-yourself (DIY) investing.

What is Self-Directed Investing?

Self-directed investing is the activity of individual investors trading
stocks, bonds, funds, and other securities on their own behalf. While they
often use discount brokers and
online trading, they don't rely on other people choosing what and when to buy
and sell. These DIY investors display several common behaviors:

The desire to craft their own investment plans based on their interests,
capacity for risk, and long-term goals

The confidence to make their own trades, regardless of the sentiment of
brokers, advisors, or the broad market

The willingness to perform their own research and the ability to act on
that information

Why Does DIY Investing Matter?

Think about it this way; what's important to you? Perhaps you're 23
years old in your first professional job and you have 35 or 40 or 45 years
before you think you want to retire. If you start now, the magic of compounding
will let you double your money many times over, if you find a good rate of return on your
investments. You can afford to be a little risky now, because a down year
here or there won't sideline your long term plan.

Alternately you could have just become a parent and want to set aside money
to help pay for your child's college education. Taxes are an issue and keeping
your principal safe is a goal. Your time span is 18-20 years, and you still
have to pay for diapers, shoes, insurance, braces, music lessons, and countless
other things in the intervening time. How do you maximize your investment?

You may even have just retired, with the requirement to start taking money
out of a tax-privileged account. You don't need to spend it right now, but
there's no point in putting it in a money-market fund where you're losing money
due to inflation. What should you do?

Every one of these situations—and more—can benefit from you
understanding your goals, knowing what you can handle for risk, and making a
good plan to do what you need to do.

This is your livelihood; why give that responsibility to someone else to
manage?

Can Self-Directed Investing Really Work?

At worst, the simplest passive investing strategy of buying the S&P 500 index fund can get you
an average return of 6-10% per year over time. That's a good return for doing
almost nothing, and you'll pay a fraction of fees as if you let a professional
money manager make a lot of trades for you.

If you go further into picking individual stocks with the value investing favored by Trendshare, you
may exceed that return dramatically in many years. (It's possible to find
stocks that double, triple, even quadruple in value. This is not a guarantee,
but market inefficiencies do exist and you can find them if you do your
research.)

Put another way: if professional money managers are so good at picking great
stocks, why are they charging you to invest your money and not trading their
own money?

This isn't a quick approach. It requires work. You need to learn how the
market works, how stocks work, and how to find great companies with great
potential and good prices. Yet that's all doable, without getting a degree in
finance or starting to talk like an MBA.

Self-Directed Brokerage Accounts in your 401(k)

You may not know this, but your 401(k) at work may offer you the option to
direct your own investments. A self-directed
brokerage account lets you bypass the fund choices your employer offers and
make your own financial decisions.

This isn't available to all 401(k) holders, and it's not the same as having
your own independent brokerage account, but you keep the tax-benefits of your
employer-sponsored plan and the benefits of your own research and choices!

Make DIY Investing Work for You

Successful self-directed investors do a few things:

Make a plan. Write it down.

Trade when it makes sense; don't trade just to trade.

Regularly evaluate your positions and your plan.

You don't have to settle for the few offerings a broker has for you; the
entire wealth of the world's stock markets is open to you: stocks, bonds,
commodities, ETFs, REITs, government bonds, whatever. All it takes is the
desire to regain control of your own money—to put it to work for you.
Start with our how to invest guide and go from
there.